


The Hinge of the Hour, the Spark of Eternity

by psiten



Category: Japanese History RPF, Juuni Kokki | Twelve Kingdoms
Genre: Bureaucracy, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Pre-Series, Stories Old People Tell, When Weekends Go To Hell In A Handbasket
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 05:34:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2801462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psiten/pseuds/psiten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A kaikyaku, a simple request that's not so simple, and a long walk to the brink of oblivion.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>"I always wondered, Sagihi -- that old gash on the back of your hand... Wherever did it come from? No one seems to know."</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	The Hinge of the Hour, the Spark of Eternity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nchi_wana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nchi_wana/gifts).



     How did I get the scar on my hand, you ask?

     Are you sure you want to take away the mystery? I know the throngs of hopeful initiates do like to amuse themselves by speculating when they think I can't hear. Why, if I had a year for every time I heard some newly minted graduate whisper, "Is it true Vice Secretary Sagihi once defended the Provincial Governor from a kogou attack and defeated the beast with nothing but her stare?" I wouldn't need to be entered on En's ranks of immortality. To tell the truth, I rather enjoy hearing all the tall tales they come up with every year.

     Oh, and if I tell you, the rest will find out. You'll tell them, and no one will ever wonder again. Where will the fun be in that?

     Well, if you must know -- and I do insist this stays between you, me, and the teapot, I must have your word -- I got this scar in a shoku, years before I became a sage. I wasn't even a graduate then, just a student. While I stood on the beach and the winds roared, a piece of driftwood crashed by in the wind. It laid my hand clear open to the bone, of course; I was lucky the tendons weren't damaged too badly or I never would have finished my reports on time. It healed up quite nicely, I think, considering the circumstances.

     Why, yes, of course that sort of shoku. Is there another kind of world-crossing storm?

     You do go on! Certainly it wasn't in En! Not with the leadership of his Imperial Majesty the Ever King. Perish the thought! No, this was in Kei, at least a hundred years ago, well before Sekishi began her honored reign as the Glory King. You have no idea what a shambles Kei was in those days. All those failed emperors one after another, decades of the throne sitting empty, all piling up in one big mess. It's no wonder there were so many refugees back then, and all the kaikyaku who came through! Let me tell you, I worked in the Kaikyaku Processing Office back then, as a student, and for a time after I graduated, too. One of the clerks on the desks, you know, since I was among the students who had learned the kaikyaku tongue well enough to help the unfortunate wretches on their way. When Kei was at its worst, we could have had one or even two washing through the office every day.

     Not a bit of exaggeration, I assure you. Hundreds of souls, and that's just the ones who made it to us. Once I personally saw seventeen kaikyaku in a single week. One week! But that's neither here nor there, is it?

     Oh, yes. Now there's the real story. Usually, I had no call to be in Kei to begin with, especially when it was as bad as all that. That's one trip I couldn't forget if I lived a thousand years, since I'm sure you know the last place you'd find any reasonable person in reasonable circumstances is standing out on the beach in a country just brimming with youma when there was a shoku. Well, I'll tell you. You won't believe me, but it's true. I was watching an old man sail a little rowboat right up to the mouth of the storm glowing in the sea, holding the oars as easy as if it were a balmy summer breeze.

     See, I told you you wouldn't believe it. He did exactly that, on purpose, I give you my word. Would it make a difference if I told you he was a kaikyaku? You know how desperate they always are to get home. Well, this one was hardly as frantic as some I've seen, but he'd made up his mind to jump through back to the other side. No, he wasn't frantic at all, nor suicidal I think. He was, however, perhaps the only kaikyaku I have ever seen refuse to admit there was no way for him to get home again once he found himself in our country.

     You're quite right. I should start at the beginning. As I said, this was when I was still in university, no closer to serving in a Governor's cabinet than I could get in my dreams, but I did rank in the top five percent of my class for studies in Hourai's language -- Japanese, they call it. I don't think they taught that in your schools. Naturally, when the time came to assign me for my clerical training rotations I spent my hours in the Kaikyaku Processing Office. I was a young girl, as you must surely remember being yourself. Just young enough to think I could change the world with radical ideas, just old enough to think I'd seen everything the world could throw at a student. The most awful kind of brat, I'm sure.

     No need to scoff, dear, I've met too many graduates who were just like I was. Brats, one and all, and insufferable, too. But there I was, at the end of my training rotation. I was working on my report to the Head Instructor about my time on the desks. Examples of routine problems, how I handled them, statistics, schedules, recommendations for additional efficiency. The usual sorts of student papers we all poured our lifeblood into every other week, earned a grade for, and relegated to our teachers' shelves for the rest of eternity where they sit around collecting dust while nothing changes. I was in the records room pulling out my log books for the season with nothing more in my mind but how to phrase my summary quatrain when a the smell of burning tobacco caught my nose.

     Quite so. Anyone in the building should have known much better than to have been smoking in the archives. A stray match could set the entire place ablaze, so of course I turned toward the smoke and called out, "There's no smoking here. Put that out before the Archivist sees you!" Students look out for each other, you know, and I assumed it had to be a new trainee who thought no one would notice if they indulged a bad habit in this wing of the office.

     I couldn't have been more wrong. The man who stepped out of the shadows to block my exit was anything but a student. He was wearing a kaikyaku's clothes, a buttoned up jacket and close cut trousers, and though I could see the wear and stains from his trip through the shoku, he'd clearly managed to find a needle and thread to mend everything. He wasn't the first I'd seen who had the presence of mind to wash himself and his garments, but he was the first who seemed to have had regular access to soap and other sundries such that he looked completely presentable in the clothing he'd been wearing when he came through. Most, you know, are ragged, or had some benefactor who dressed them in the local style. This one gave me the sudden impression of what kaikyaku clothes ought to look like, instead of the silly rags we usually see.

     He was homely and gray-haired -- I'd call him sixty years old if he was a day -- but he had dignity, more like a minister of some bureau or another than a transient, only without the puffed chest and bluster of a bureaucrat. Without the affability of most bureaucrats as well. I felt shivers up my spine the moment I saw him, the way you feel when you realize you'd just walked up to the edge of a cliff and escaped falling to your death by a hair's breadth. The very air around him filled with a sense of lethality, even before he turned his narrow eyes in your direction. When he did that, it felt more like he'd punctured your heart with his gaze to let all the fear seep into your blood. He may have been old, but he was by no means feeble or soft.

     And of course, he had that cigarette. He'd rolled tobacco in paper as many of the kaikyaku prefer to a pipe, and smoked it right in front of me as if he'd understood me -- despite the fact that I hadn't used his language and he couldn't have known ours (or so I thought) -- but simply didn't care for my rules. I could see him sizing me up with the slits of his eyes. I had no doubt from his frown that he wasn't impressed, as if it were my job to impress someone who wasn't supposed to be there! But I'll admit, I hadn't learned how to be impressive yet, and very few people can be impressive when their blood is frozen with the fear of their imminent demise.

     Well, I'd never learned how to say, "You shouldn't smoke in the Archives," in Japanese either, or even "You shouldn't be in the Archives". No one ever thought we'd have the need, I imagine. Since I wasn't a sage back then it wasn't so easy to speak to him as I saw fit, but we did all learn how to say, "Stop that, please" and "It's forbidden," in Kaikyaku Processing training, so that's exactly what I told him after I pulled in a deep breath to speak despite his formidable presence. With a nice, "Allow me to lead you to the New Arrivals processing line," for good measure, I opened the door and pointed him out to the hallway. I flatter myself that my hand only shook a little, even though I thought my knees would give out.

     Oh, no. Naturally, he didn't go. More than that, he had a look in his eye that could've made up for any lack of a common language. It said I had no power to make him do anything he wasn't of a mind to do, whether it was putting out his cigarette or standing in line. For the first time, though he hadn't moved at all, I noticed the sword hanging on his hip. It was in a slender sheath, ever so slightly curved, with a long grip wrapped in cord. There was nothing shining or showy about it, but he wore it with the air of good use. One almost never sees kaikyaku swords anymore, and the ones in the pawnshops from ages ago always seem so small and plain next to swords of local make, but this was no toy. He watched me glance at his sword, then back at his face, and he spoke the first words he'd said to me throughout the whole exchange.

     "So you speak my language. I'm looking for someone who can answer some questions."

     When I didn't move -- I was frozen, my hand still on the door, you see -- he waited as long as it took for him to breathe in another puff of smoke and breathe it back out again (making all the books in the archive smell awful for at least a year, I'm sure) before he added, "Please."

     You can be certain I didn't plan to tell him, "No"! I had no intention of dying before I graduated, and if anything was clear to me, it was that I wasn't qualified to handle this man.

     I had to call on the Japanese our curriculum saw fit to teach us, which didn't include a comprehensive vocabulary for beginning an open-ended conversation, nor did the finer points of my education come easily to me when I was scared out of my mind, but, "I will arrange an introduction for you," and, "Could you write down your name, your address in your city of origin, and your occupation, please?" were well within my grasp. Of course, the only person it made sense to bring him to was a sage who could understand any question he might choose to ask, and would be able to answer without reaching for an awkward translation. I only had the authority to introduce him to one sage, given my low level my department: it was Director Bessou or nobody. Luckily, I had my log book with me, since I was there to gather materials for my report to begin with, and the archives always had ink and brushes available. I set out the book next to the inkwell, open to a blank page, and since he hadn't moved an inch from where he'd been standing, I repeated myself.

     "Could you please write down your name, your address in your city of origin, and your occupation so that I can properly process your request?"

     "My name is Fujita Gorou," he said to that. "That's all you need to know."

     I made my best guess at how to write his name, since he made no indication that he was willing to do it himself, and told myself that would have to be good enough. I told the shift manager that I wouldn't be able to take my desk for the afternoon because this kaikyaku had urgent business with Director Bessou, and when she looked in the man's deadly eyes she declined to put up a fuss about it. And that was how I embarked on entirely the strangest three days that I had ever known before or since. To think, while I was leading him through the hallways, during which time he lifted a new cigarette to the butt of his old one to light it when the first ran low, all I could ponder was that my professor would never approve when I had to write my report about how I'd handled the problems I'd faced on the job -- referring a kaikyaku to a sage! how unthinkable! -- and that everyone in the department would remember me as that useless girl who couldn't even get a man to put out his cigarette in the hallways. I was so sure I'd be laughed out of the government before I could even get a real posting.

     Well, yes, now that all seems like a silly worry, but at the time I was quite sure I'd be sent home to weave baskets and sell them at market until I died of old age.

     Be that as it may, I had no better idea than to approach Director Bessou's receptionist and tell him I had a Mr. Fujita Gorou to see the Director, and we didn't have an appointment but we could wait here until the Director was free.

     "Sagihi, was it?" the receptionist asked. He pulled out his schedule for the day to check for an opening. "I'll see if I can find a few minutes when he's free. Would you ask your kaikyaku to put out his cigarette? He's dropping ash on the floors and the smell is foul."

     I bowed to Fujita and pointed to his cigarette. "The gentleman requests you to stop that, please," I told him in Japanese, not having learned any better phrases during the walk, "It's forbidden. You will need to wait here while I find someone to assist you."

     He didn't put the cigarette out, as I'd expected he wouldn't. Instead he asked me, "So that must be the middle man?" I smiled at him, since I had no idea what that meant, and I'm fairly sure what he muttered next was, "I hate middle men." And would you believe, straight away he walked up to the receptionist's desk himself, breathing smoke right in his face, and said, "You're too slow. Hurry it up," in the local tongue! Not quite perfect in his pronunciation, but a reasonable approximation of the dialect in the capital city.

     You should have seen that receptionist nearly fall out of his chair, to be spoken to as if he were a farmhand, and by a kaikyaku no less! He was red in the face, angry enough to spit I assure you, at least until he caught sight of Fujita's narrow eyes. He changed his mind in a hurry after that. All the blood drained from his face with a fear I couldn't blame him for. He closed his appointment book, glaring at me as if to say that all culpability for his predicament was going to fall on my head when this was over. Or trying to. It's hard to glare, you know, when you're shaking too hard to stand without unbalancing yourself.

     "P-pardon me while I inform the Director that you wait on his convenience."

     Fujita looked at me for a translation, such was my luck, and the receptionist hurried away as fast as his high, pointed slippers would let him run. I told him, "We need to wait here for an audience with the Director."

     Of course, at that very moment, the Director bellowed at the receptionist from inside his office. You must imagine him roaring, the echoes going up and down the halls as people stopped to look, then hurried to go back to whatever they were doing before they were spotted looking. And there was I, knowing that when Director Bessou (not the most temperate of men) shouted, "Is she incapable of making an appointment through the proper channels?!" he was talking about me and no one else. Fujita could tell as well, I'll wager from the satisfied smirk that howl put on his thin lips for the briefest of moments. At least, he knew he was the one who'd caused it, whether or not he knew the blame would come down on me, but I think he must've known I'd take the worst of it. He glanced at me next, as if taking my measure again, as if I were a branch in the forest he'd tested for shape and was now testing for strength to see if I'd make an appropriate walking stick. I may have been insufferable, but he was an ass.

     So I smiled, the perfect smile of a processing clerk to any kaikyaku, and told him, "This will only be a moment," while the Director berated his receptionist's deflection skills. I had no intention of embarrassing myself as badly as the receptionist had. By then, I was starting to grow accustomed to the fear, and this interview (so I thought) could prove to my best chance to leave this man and this threatening air behind for good.

     "I've waited long enough," Fujita answered, strolling towards the source of the yelling at what looked like a leisurely pace, but as long as his legs were and as cumbersome as official robes can be, I had to trot to get ahead of him. Even if I couldn't control him, I could at least prevent this from looking like an attack when the old kaikyaku barged in. I only just edged him out as we got to the threshold.

     "Fujita Gorou of Hourai to see you, my Lord!" I called out over the din, taking up the entire doorway as I bowed so the old man couldn't walk around me without pushing me out of the way. For all I recall of that moment -- my mind was more racing to find anything I could do than calmly considering what I ought to do -- I might have hoped he would push me out of the way. Then at least my lack of protocol might be reported to the University as something other than my fault.

     Naturally, Fujita chose that moment to observe calmly from behind me instead of barging in. I couldn't have been more mortified. The Director glowered over my head, and do believe I could feel Fujita glowering right back. I thought I might die in that moment. Then, all at once, Director Bessou waved the receptionist out of his office and motioned the two of us forward.

     "Now, let's hear what's so--"

     "You're in charge here," Fujita interrupted, taking another puff on his cigarette as the Director went from sitting down with dignity to falling the rest of the way to his chair. "What can you tell me about the events that brought me to this place?"

     Turning to me, Director Bessou went quite red in the face, flaring his nose like a rabbit sniffing the air. Sages, I've learned, grow out of fearing for their lives like mortals do, but that won't stop one from necessarily sensing a threat and reacting with anger. The gusts of his breath rippled the enormous length of his mustache, and I was like a scared little mouse listening to him yell, "Did you bring me a kaikyaku so he could question me about shoku? Your own training should--"

     Fujita leaned a fist on the desk. The weight of the motion filled the room with silence the way a stove fills with suffocating heat, and the Director suddenly looked more like a seared pig in embroidered robes than a bureaucrat. "I'm asking the questions," Fujita told him. His voice took on a tone that made my throat close up, fairly aching with clamping down any possible sound. From the way the Director swallowed, he seemed to feel the same way. "Let's start over. Any paper pusher could tell me that storm was called a shoku. Quite a phenomenon to see from the inside." His cigarette was running down, so just like before he lit another one from its embers and breathed out a lungful of new smoke as he put out the old one by crushing the still burning end between his fingers. He dropped the stifled end in the dustbin. "So what can you tell me about it? Director Bessou, was it?"

     As you can no doubt imagine, the Director had no answer at all. No one in our department studied them. Most of us had never even seen one. But startled as he was, the Director seemed on the verge of coming up with some kind of answer suitable for not losing face in front of a subordinate. Unfortunately for him, as soon as the first choke of a sound escaped his throat, Fujita cut him off again. "That's what I thought," the man said to the Director's lack of a response. "If you would be so kind as to refer me to someone who can answer my questions, I'm sure your clerk here can show me the way."

     So much for my chance to leave the kaikyaku in other hands!

     I think the haste with which the Director wrote out and stamped his seal on an introduction letter to Vice Secretary Ringa of the College of Sciences was a sign of his own desire to make his escape. He could take that thin excuse to get Fujita out of his office. The fact that he'd sent the kaikyaku to someone useful instead of someone he simply hated had to be gratitude for Fujita offering him a way to avoid being completely humiliated; and the fact that he hadn't called for guards had to be pure fear that this man was more dangerous than the guards could be. Everyone I met who saw him that day (and would ever speak to me again, of course) told me the same thing. They would've been too scared to call for the guards, for fear it might anger him and the poor guards wouldn't survive it -- and they didn't even know someone had given him a youma-killing knife.

     Of course no one realized! But he had one all the same, although I didn't find out myself until after the interview with Vice Secretary Ringa. She gave the man quite an interesting lecture on the most modern theories of the time regarding how shoku were formed, what conditions let us predict them soon enough to make any degree of preparation, why they glow and how the worlds are connected... All very fascinating. You must remind me to tell you about how the volatile nature of the things sets the very air to glowing within, and the heat from that--

     No, no, you're quite right, I'm straying from the point. Well, I could have listened for hours, but no more than a quarter hour through Fujita interrupted the Vice Secretary to ask her how one could create a shoku to return to his own world.

     Quite so! He might as well have asked how to collar the tides or saddle a typhoon, and the Vice Secretary told him so, but he simply would not relent.

     "I observed your procedures for registering Japanese people who show up in your country. You're not taking their residential information because you can use it. You're testing to be sure they're not lying," he said, staring down the Vice Secretary -- who of course had never worked in the Processing Office and had no idea. With quivering eyes and a hesitant hold of her breath, she looked at me, and I may have been about to die of my heart racing but I managed to nod that it was true. Fujita went on as if she'd known the whole time. "Streets, cities, provinces... Men younger than me have seen those things change more than once where I come from, but your people are signing off on current information. That's not possible unless you have someone who goes to Japan to check facts and then comes back here, safely and on a schedule."

     His tone was just rude enough for the Vice Secretary to know he was letting her save face by pretending she already knew. It was already clear that was a habit with him, and one I suggest never emulating unless you can handle being stabbed in the back as well as I'm certain that man could. And there I was, still carrying my records from the archives, certain I might as well hand them over to the next Archivist to cross my path for all the good writing my report would do me after tromping through the lower offices and now the Colleges with my unyielding, smoking chimney stack of a kaikyaku. And yet I couldn't bear to give them up. You might say their familiarity gave me comfort while prolonged time in Fujita's presence caused my heart to crash so hard against my chest, again and again, I thought my ribs might break.

     I suppose you could also put that down to the vengeful tenacity of the young. I was determined that whether or not my teachers allowed me to graduate, I would fulfill my obligations and go home with my head held high. If anyone planned to refuse my report, they would refuse the best report any student could make, and I would turn it in on time. So, of course, when the Vice Secretary told Fujita she didn't see how the source of En's information on Hourai could concern him, the man dragging me through the government told her, "I'd like to speak to that person about accompanying them on their next trip."

     Well, yes, I knew who _that person_ is, just as well as you do, and of course Vice Secretary Ringa knew who that person is, but Fujita had no idea. I'm sure if he had known, he'd have asked to see the Taiho from the beginning, and none of this would have happened. If I'd made that request _from the beginning_ , I'd have been laughed out of the court! Vice Secretary Ringa was just as aghast as you might imagine.

     "To what end?" she gasped, and I'm sure she was shocked enough that even those words were nearly impossible to say.

     So Fujita replies, breathing out his smoke at perfect ease, "To find my way home, of course. I have a family, an occupation. My wife will only cover my disappearance for two weeks before she expects some communication to prove I'm not dead. After four weeks, she'd hold the funeral. I assume we'll come to some kind of arrangement before then."

     The Vice Secretary's eyes must have grown as round as turtle's eggs, not so different from the way your eyes look now, to tell the truth. I'm sure mine were just the same. But that was what he said, word for word. Naturally, the Vice Secretary asked him, "And what, pray tell, is your _occupation_?" The same question was on my own tongue -- although I confess, she managed to ask it with much more politeness and composure than I would have managed.

     For once, the man honestly seemed confused. His eyes flicked over her as he drew a breath through his cigarette to fill the silence. I knew she must have lived at least five times his years no matter how old he was, but he eyed her just like an adult who heard a child ask the most incomprehensible question, which he then feels he needs to answer before the child will behave. And what do you think his answer was?

     "I'm an accountant," he said, all narrow eyes and hardness under his flat, gray hair -- the sword calluses on his hands marked out plainly by the tobacco stains from his cigarettes.

     As if anyone would believe that about a man like him. I ask you, have you ever met an accountant who could plausibly kill a person with a glance?

     Vice Secretary Ringa was a model of dignity then, to which I've aspired ever since. She folded her hands on the desk and looked this man straight in the eyes, so much less fearful than the Director had been. "Even if the Taiho admits you for an audience," she said, "the answer to your request will be no. I am sorry, for your family as well as for yourself, but whatever life you had before is at an end. It will be our privilege here in En to help you adjust to this world. I hope Sagihi has made that clear."

     "Clear enough," he answered, although I'd barely had a chance to explain anything between our dashes from place to place.

     She folded up the paperwork Fujita had collected and handed it back to him, saying, "I can only recommend that you return to the Kaikyaku Processing Office, complete your registration, and collect your stipend. If you like, I can personally request a position for you with one of the best naturalization schools we--"

     "And yet," he insisted," I would prefer the chance to put my case to your Taiho. If he says no, I'll take that under advisement." To this day, I have no idea whether at that time he meant that he would take a refusal under advisement before he pursued means to persuade a different answer, or whether he'd consider the generous offer she'd made him. I was simply happy that he'd been civil with her, to the greatest degree that I'd seen him be truly civil to that point.

     The Ministers she sent us to in the lower palace, with her gift of a properly drawn up petition to see the Taiho in hand, received no such courtesy. Oh, how I could have died of mortification, to lead such a man as him, a man who reeked of deadliness if not of death itself, on a quest to see the Taiho! But there I was, still assigned as his guide. I expect Fujita considered the Ministers to whom he had to submit his petition to be "middle men" like the Director's receptionist, despite the fact that we were talking to the Seneschal of the Inner Palace and his personal assistants. At least, he was talking. I was prostrated on the cold tile at their feet and happy for the chance to have spent that entire conversation kneeling with my head bowed, as embarrassed as I was by my charge's own refusal to bow (or to extinguish his seventh cigarette of the afternoon). I'm certain my face was as red as could be.

     Yours would've been, too, in my situation. There I was, listening to the Seneschal demand that Fujita show any capacity to behave with proper respect by kneeling -- the Seneschal being a man who dealt with En's foremost generals, and was thus more inured to dangerous men than I. He never once faltered when he explained that only after Fujita showed his tractability (of which he had none) would anyone consider his petition for an audience within the Inner Palace. Events had so exceeded my ability to process them, I could barely believe the moment was real. It would have been preposterous to ever think a humble student like myself might be allowed to see the Taiho, let alone to be present while an utterly unfathomable kaikyaku demanded the chance to ascend the mountain. The sheer unreality made me calm, fear fading into a fog that burned away with the light of absurdity. Panic seemed useless. I was almost giddy! And in the silence of my calm, giddy terror, Fujita's rock-like voice echoed through the hall.

     "Is it the custom in your country for a ranking official of a sovereign nation to kneel in front of a servitor? We do things differently in Japan."

     Said the man who, not an hour earlier, had claimed to be an accountant, which point I certainly wasn't going to raise unasked.

     But you can imagine how the Seneschal bridled at being called a servitor. His reflection on the floor showed clearly enough how his eyebrows nearly leapt off his face and his nostrils flared so much, I thought his nose might turn inside out. He told Fujita, "It is the custom in En for foreign dignitaries to present the official token of their position when requesting that their position be considered, as you would know if your country were one with which En had a pact of mutual recognition; and yet you come before us empty handed except for the recommendation of a Vice Secretary from within our own palace. Would you kindly present your seal of office, _Sir_ Fujita?"

     I heard a metallic clack and a whisper-quiet brush of fabric. Daring to glance up for just a moment, I saw the kaikyaku had taken his sword off his belt and was now tying a cord around the guard in an intricate knot that bound the sword into its sheath. He held it parallel to the floor for the Seneschal to take into his trembling hands, and he said, "This is the sword of one who was hatamoto to the Shogun of Japan, who seeks an audience with all possible speed. Tell that to your Taiho. If he knows my country as well as I believe he does, he'll know what that means."

     The Seneschal looked sickly pale, as well he might when being asked to take a sword to the Taiho. At that moment, I stopped fearing that I might be sent home to weave baskets and began to fear that the Ever King would demand my life for having brought this man to his door. The gathered ministers all shared a horrified series of looks, as if those sages were just as worried as the poor mortal student I was that this might be their last day of life, even though they had some choice to refuse his request. But then again, they could understand his speech perfectly, and the word "hatamoto" was one I had never had cause to learn.

     Seeing the Seneschal's hands grow so trembling and weak while they considered the matter, Fujita frowned around his cigarette. Said he, "If you drop that, I'll kill you," in the most matter of fact tone, as if he were reminding them he'd have no choice rather than threatening. And the Seneschal must have heard the truth of all his claims in his voice, for he himself was the one to bow, bending at the waist to the kaikyaku before he hurried to the Inner Palace.

     I can only assume he didn't hand the sword to the Taiho directly, as none of us were executed for blasphemy. We were instead escorted up the stairs, after we were checked for other weapons, naturally. And during the check, would you believe, Fujita volunteered a blade the guards hadn't found? A local short sword hidden in the back of his shirt, the Youma-killing blade I mentioned before. He claimed it had been a gift while he'd traveled from Kei to En. How true that claim was, I doubt I'll ever know. But once we'd been checked, the guards took us across a courtyard filled with flowers like stars that spiralled with such majesty that one barely dared breathe a mortal breath. If I never see the imperial gardens again, I shall count myself happy to have seen that sight on that day. And if I had died that day, I think I might have considered it a worthy price for the chance to see such beauty.

     Then, at the end of the walk, my mind came back to me, and with it my fear, because we were standing in front of a carved wooden door two stories tall, set in a wall of smooth alabaster so pure it seemed to shine. We were outside the audience chambers of the Ever King, and I was standing with an audacious kaikyaku who had bullied his way through the government and still had not seen fit to cease smoking his cigarettes.

     The guards filed into posts by the door as the Captain told me, "The Emperor and the Taiho will hear your petition privately. You and the kaikyaku should advance in a position of reverence to the edge of the wooden platform, where you will prostrate yourselves. His Imperial Majesty will hear your suit after he has satisfied certain curiosities regarding your situation. Will you explain this to your kaikyaku?"

     "Her kaikyaku can understand you perfectly," Fujita growled before I could answer. Everyone beyond the stairs to the Inner Palace is a sage, after all, although the Captain of the Guard looked at the man as if he could never _understand_ no matter how well the gifts of the sages allowed them to hear each others' words. More likely, he simply felt that speaking to a kaikyaku was beneath his station but a perfect fit for mine, or that this one was too rude to bear. As the one who'd been face to face with his rudeness all day while traversing the breadth of the government's offices, I was too exhausted to be patient even with the Captain of the Guard over a request that I translate his words to no possible fruitful end. What's more, this was a kaikyaku whom the Emperor had seen fit to invite to his audience chambers upon seeing his sword when Fujita's request had been to meet the Taiho alone (audacious enough in itself). I can't say I had much patience for snobbery, either.

     So I curtsied with all the textbook etiquette at my disposal and told him, "I should hate to keep His Imperial Majesty the Ever King waiting while I render an honorable sage's words into the kaikyaku's language with my own clumsy understanding of that foreign tongue. Moreover, if my failure to speak with the proper precision caused him to offer some affront before the honored glory of our Emperor, my spirit could never find rest."

     Fujita scoffed. I wondered for a moment if he'd somehow understood what I'd told the Captain, but I learned later that he had no concept of our language beyond the few phrases he'd learned on his way to the capital. He was laughing at some expression the Captain had made that I couldn't see, and which became irrelevant when it dropped off his face as Fujita asked, "Are we free to satisfy the Emperor's curiosities, or did you have further business with us?" I blushed to hear him including myself in his statement when he'd always spoken in the singular before, and I couldn't tell you if it was shock, embarrassment, an odd fondness for the strange old man who still frightened me quite half to death, or ridiculous pride that I'd been upgraded from a walking stick to some kind of comrade. Perhaps all of the above.

     The surliness with which the Captain nodded at the door most likely spoke to some desire to see Fujita be just rude enough for the Emperor to demand his head, but I had the feeling this man hadn't survived to a gray-haired old age by crossing the line of "rude enough to kill". He'd bullied his way through our government efficiently enough that he must have had a wealth of experience doing it. That said, I had no hope that he'd offer the Taiho or even the Emperor the courtesy they deserved. Whether or not he saw me personally as a walking stick, he'd treated everyone we'd seen as nothing more than a resource to be used.

     My surprise when the door opened and the Taiho himself poked his head out (I couldn't get to my knees fast enough once I saw his golden hair) was matched only by my surprise at seeing this kaikyaku, who had measured every person he'd met from myself to the Captain of the Guard with a glance and found us all wanting, react to the kirin of En with widened eyes -- well, wide enough to see a hint of roundness in the narrow slits he glared through. Clearly the skill he flaunted to read people in an instant wasn't entirely bluster.

     "So you're the jerk who sent me his sword," the Taiho grumbled. (It's true, the Taiho grumbles! And I'm sure he'd consider it disrespect if I misrepresented him by claiming otherwise.) He sniffed the air then, wrinkling his nose at Fujita. "You stink."

     And would you believe, Fujita crushed his cigarette between his fingers and put the unsmoked end in his pocket, blowing out his last breath of smoke with a deliberate upward tilt of his chin to keep it from drifting near the Taiho's face! That man, the man I had followed all day wondering if an honestly respectful word could come out of his mouth, knelt there on the threshold on a single knee with a fist braced on the ground and his head lowered in a perfect battlefield bow, and he said, "I'm sorry my presence offends you."

     What's more, he sounded like he meant it.

     The Taiho harrumphed at him, saying, "Well, get in here, would you? I can't wait all day for Shouryuu to get back to work. And just walk on your feet, not your knees, it'll be faster."

     Far be it for us to disobey the Taiho! After I curtsied once more to the Captain of the Guard, and after Fujita untied the laces on his shoes so he could remove them, we _walked_ before the throne of the Ever King. Naturally, I still prostrated myself when I reached the edge of the platform, where Fujita's sword was waiting in a display rack still bound. Fujita didn't prostrate himself, but he did kneel in a proper bow as he had done outside -- and left his sword untouched. I daresay he knew or could intuit court etiquette well enough if he understood that one did not take action before the Emperor without His Imperial Majesty's leave.

     As for His Imperial Majesty, let me assure you, he deserves every flattery that has ever been said about his person and more besides. Having seen him with upright eyes, I can vouch for the strength of his jaw, the dark rivers of his hair, the depth of his gaze -- and a few things no one ever mentions. The Ever King has a dimple in his right cheek when he smiles, which he wasn't doing then, but which he does grandly, and the blues in his robes make his complexion glow like the face of a stone outcropping at dawn. And when he's frowning--

     Oh, you have no sense of romance. Even a sage going on two hundred is young enough to dream. But very well, back to the matter. We were bowing, His Divinely Handsome Imperial Majesty cut a forbidding figure on his throne, the Taiho had decided he preferred to sit in a window to the west where he could enjoy the ebbing sunlight.

     "Fujita-dono," the Emperor said, "We have been apprised of your suit, and must hear your answers on several counts before We decide your fate. Have you come here to answer honestly and directly for your purpose in Our Court?"

     And even though his tongue speaks all languages that the ear may hear, I could hear him speaking Japanese -- perhaps because of his intent to speak with Fujita in the language they shared, and because I understood enough of those words for his choice to use them to reach my ears. The effect of hearing him speak the kaikyaku language, which I knew only as a student does no matter how well I'd studied, combined with the force of the sage's blessing to have his words comprehended, made me reel. Had I not been prostrate before the platform where his throne stood, I might have collapsed. I understood the foreign words he spoke, as well as I understood my own mother speaking. The experience may not have improved my vocabulary permanently, but I must say... the total understanding of what was meant by his words improved my grammar and my instinct for proper composition ten-fold -- which, I know, interests you even less than the many physical charms of our Emperor. Sometimes I wonder why we're friends, dear.

     Fujita was now the picture of propriety! As he knelt, his head bowed, he said, "Before the foot of your throne, I do so come," without the least trace of insubordination.

     I was as silent as could be as the Emperor questioned him, stunned to stone by the words echoing through the air.

     "We were taken by surprise to hear Our Seneschal inform us that a direct vassal--" Here, he used the word 'hatamoto' I had failed to understand before. "-- that a direct vassal of the Shogun had come as emissary to the nation of En. Tell Us, Fujita-dono: who is this Shogun you serve so well?"

     So said the kaikyaku, "I fear the Seneschal mistook the message your humble servant asked him to convey to Your Majesty. I am no emissary, only a luckless traveller. However, it is my fortune to have pledged my sword to My Lord the Shogun Tokugawa Iemochi, and after him Tokugawa Yoshinobu."

     "A luckless traveller. Certainly a more likely story. We remain curious, however, that you name yourself vassal to a Shogun whose government -- We have on excellent report -- was overthrown some two score years gone."

     "As you say, Your Majesty. However, his surrender was no fault of mine."

     At that, the Ever King erupted in laughter that echoed like summer thunder. I dared peek out of the tops of my eyes, and saw that dimple twinkling in his cheek at he gestured at Fujita while calling to the Taiho, "I like this one!"

     "Good for you," the Taiho grumbled back. "I don't."

     Turning back to us, His Imperial Majesty explained, "Since you proclaimed yourself to Us by what you were, let Us do likewise that we may understand each other. In times gone, under the Ashikaga Shogun, Our father served as a governor for the Shimazu clan in Satsuma. We believe you will have heard of them."

     "I served with men from Satsuma, both in the old government and the new."

     "We may not have served the same Shogun, but We are pleased to think of you as a comrade in spirit. Would that Our duties left Us time at present to share stories over a bottle of wine," the Emperor said, laughter creeping into his voice again.

     "But they don't," called the Taiho from the window.

     With a sigh, the Emperor's gravity returned. "Fujita-dono, you are welcome here in En. What boon have you come to seek to ease your way in Our fair nation?"

     Said the kaikyaku, "No boon, Your Majesty, but the chance to return home to my wife and children. I will not tire your ears with woeful stories that Your Majesty has no doubt known well. My desire is a simple one. If the Taiho travels to Japan, I ask to follow when he goes."

     His Imperial Majesty was silent for some moments, and unmoving, until the Taiho curled his knees to his chest in the window frame like a child and said, "Shouryuu... if he--"

     "No," the Emperor said at last. The word tolled through the hall like a blacksmith's hammer. Then, more softly, he spoke to the Taiho, again saying, "No. The kirin of En is not a ferry horse with whom a man can book passage."

     "Shouryuu..." the Taiho pleaded, but the Emperor shook his head.

     "We have spoken. The matter is ended. Fujita-dono, you may make a different request. We would not have an honest petitioner leave Us empty handed."

     I closed my eyes and faced the ground fully once more, aware of every breath I had the fortune to breathe in that moment. I can't say I was afraid, as I think fear itself might have trembled to find itself in front of that throne, but I also couldn't help but wonder if the kaikyaku would play on the Taiho's infinite mercy in an attempt to bargain for his passage. It would've been a breach of decency to be sure, but it must be clear by now, he wasn't the sort to submit easily to an unfavorable situation. However, once again, he surprised me -- this time with his reasonability. Without so much as frustration in his voice (indeed, with what sounded like gratitude for hearing his request denied), he let out a nostalgic sigh. Almost a chuckle.

     "Your Majesty, you are a fair man. It was my honor to serve under a fair man once, and my time in that service is the pride of my life. If I were young again, and if I had no country and family waiting for me, I would gladly ask you for the chance to serve a fair man once more. However, I do not have it in my heart to forget my home. All I will ask of Your Majesty is safe passage back to the country south of your borders, that I may find my own way back."

     There was nothing he could mean but to find a natural shoku and cross the worlds once again. Had my voice come easily, I might have objected, but everyone else present seemed to find his intentions understandable.

     "You shall have it," said the Emperor. "Take your sword, Fujita-dono, and go with Our good will." I could feel his eyes turn to my bowed head. "Your name is Sagihi?"

     "Yes, Your Majesty," I told him, my tongue slipping into the kaikyaku language the Emperor and Fujita had been using around me.

     "You have conducted yourself well. It is Our wish that you accompany Fujita-dono into Kei, to translate the words of our people into his tongue and to guide him on his way."

     Well, one simply does not tell the Emperor that one cannot do as he requests because of a report one needs to write, and I said, "As Your Majesty commands," without hesitation. I didn't even dare ask if someone would tell my teachers at the University why I'd be gone. In fact, I don't think I remembered how to use my voice until after we'd gone to the Passport Office with the Emperor's decree (where we received the most exquisitely engraved passport tokens you can imagine, with spiraling dragons inlaid in gold, as well as an unthinkably generous stipend to pay for supplies on our journey) and I was in the streets of the capital watching Fujita bargain for more tobacco and rolling papers with a tobacconist -- entirely without my help, of course, which he seemed to neither want nor need.

     He merely lit his last cigarette (with a match this time) and put his depleted tobacco pouch (goodness knows how he'd explained to someone that he'd needed one, or gotten the money to buy it) and box of rolling papers on the counter with a nod. The shopkeeper filled the pouch, handed him papers and matches, counted up the fee on an abacus, all silently, and Fujita held up the smallest gold piece he had from the Emperor's gift. Although the tobacconist made a sour face over emptying his drawer to make change, the heavy bag of ordinary coins he handed back finally made me feel enough like I was back in my own proper world that I could speak.

     I asked Fujita, "What did you mean when you said His Majesty is a fair man?"

     The kaikyaku kept walking as we talked, heading for the edge of the city with all speed, but clearly with no intention of asking any of the merchants riding by with carts if they could give us a ride to the travelers' checkpoint. "What does it mean for any man to be fair? Your Emperor doesn't go soft on his own rules, for good or ill. If he made an exception for me, he knew there'd be no end of people wondering, why not them? There needs to be a line. Now, where's the best place to shop for provisions? We've got a long hike ahead of us."

     "You mean to walk all the way to Kei?" I asked. The study materials under my arm felt all the more cumbersome when he stared at me as if that choice were obvious. I'd been counting on the time we'd spend riding by caravan to research and write the paper I had due. "I can contract for a horse cart if you wish. You may find it faster."

     "They barely outpace a man walking at a steady march, and they're sure to stick to the safe routes. Walking direct will get me there sooner," he said. Nothing, of course, about how I'd get back through the youma-infested lands where he'd leave me.

     Well, I told him, "You could rent a flying beast with the money His Majesty has afforded you," and pointed at the livery shop. "It would fly as you saw fit, faster than any man walks."

     "They look drugged," said he. "I can't trust a beast without his wits. Now, provisions?"

     There was no arguing with him, and I sensed in his demeanor -- less threatening to me now, but no less formidable -- that he more tolerated than desired my company. Very well, I thought, I could work through the night and find myself a caravan for the road back. I led him to the nearest store that had reasonable prices on any food a traveler could want for a long journey, and had paper and ink besides. I'd had no time to procure my own from my dormitory before leaving on this trip, and I had enough of my own money to pay for them, although naturally my kaikyaku had questions about the shopkeeper bringing me brushes and an inkstone, ink sticks and scrolls in traveling cases as well as a bag to carry them in.

     "Two extra pounds will feel like twenty by the end of the day," Fujita told me. "We'll be moving fast, you understand?"

     "I understand. However, I have duties. Whether those duties feel like twenty pounds or twenty thousand, I intend to fulfill them. I can keep pace."

     The nod he gave me seemed oddly like approval, although the way he replied, "See that you do," was as brusque as ever. He gave the shopkeeper another nod to communicate his wordless decision to pay for my goods as well, then he took the records I'd been carrying since I'd met him in the Archives and rolled them open to examine. "Seems straightforward enough."

     "I beg your pardon?" I asked.

     "The layout of your ledgers," he answered. "You'll be losing fifteen hours of your work time each day to assist me. I'll settle our debt by assisting you when we make camp."

     I thought better of protesting that no one could walk for fifteen hours a day, hoping that at least some of that time would be spent cooking and eating a meal or two, and instead protested, "But you can't possibly know how to read our language!"

     He scoffed as he packed my scrolls in with the rest of our sundries. "Didn't I tell you? I'm an accountant. If you tell me what I'm looking for, I can find my way around a ledger." And that was how it happened that the most terrifying man I had ever met, or could ever hope to meet, declared himself my research assistant for my final paper, as I did indeed march fifteen hours in a day on our road to Kei. I composed in my head while we walked to keep my mind off the pain in my legs, Fujita fought and killed every youma that crossed our path fast enough that he barely broke stride (and youma began to avoid us late in the day, sniffing the air when we approached then running the other way), we ate and drank while we walked, and when we made camp -- just as he'd promised -- Fujita made short work of helping me find entries, mark them, and tally them. I transcribed my day's compositions as well as I could while I noted for the kaikyaku which entries to find next and what to do with them. I don't know what kind of accountant he was, or what sort of place would need an accountant so dangerous as he, but there was no denying that he was as skilled with an abacus as he...

     No, that's not true. I'm not sure it's possible to be as skilled with an abacus as he was with a sword. He added figures as fast as any I've seen, but he could slay a monster twice his size with a single, flicker-fast cut as if the creature were standing still instead of attacking, and do it all without dropping the ash from the end of the cigarette in his mouth or stirring a hair on his old, gray head. I can't even say it was impressive. It was preposterous! An ancient man like him, killing the way he did. No, it wasn't fighting at all. It was killing. I'm sure I never want to see Hourai with my own eyes if men like that need to exist in it.

     And after perhaps three hours of sleep that first night, he woke fresh at dawn and roused me, worn and aching, to make the final march to a beach deep enough in Kei for the seas to be prone to shoku. I had wondered if his parting would be somehow dramatic, but he simply made camp at the edge of the beach to help me count, recount, and figure until the skies turned dark with the clouds of an oncoming storm. I packed my papers away from the winds. He righted an abandoned rowboat on the shore, watching for the start of a shoku. Once he saw one forming, he pushed the boat off the shore and called out, not even turning over his shoulder to look me in the eye, "Watch yourself. The winds are dangerous." That was the last I heard from him.

     As if I needed to be told! Even less by a man who was rowing an old craft that barely looked seaworthy into dark seas with white-crested waves lashing the sky. But as he rode out, I couldn't tear my eyes away. I wanted to know if he'd make it home after all he'd done. I'll never know, not really, since I can't know how he landed when he came through the other side. All the same, I watched to make sure he didn't drown, which he didn't. I lifted my hand -- this very hand -- to shield my eyes from the flying debris as he rowed his boat into the spiral of the whirlpool, balanced on the edge as if this were as usual as stepping into a hot spring, and jumped feet first into the glow at the center of the sea, never to be seen again.

     I didn't even feel the driftwood cut my hand. It was too numbed by the storm winds whipping by. I only know it was driftwood from the splinters I pulled out later, when I washed and wrapped the wound in strips torn from parts of my underskirts that hadn't turned muddy over the walk. By then, it didn't even feel odd to do so. I was too tired and too worn out by the walking, the constant terror, the happiness of still having my life while knowing that I was now left alone on a storm-tossed beach with miles of youma-filled road between me and my home. It was as if I didn't have the energy left to be afraid, or even worried, about a little thing like a wound. Luckily, the youma still seemed to consider the scent I'd acquired one worth avoiding. I never would have survived the walk otherwise.

     Oh yes, I walked. By then, I was duly convinced that I could walk straight toward the city and simply pick up with the first caravan I met, and pay them to take me on. Fujita had stolen a bit of my paper at some point, you see, and wrapped a note around the cord of the money purse. "Payment for your services," it said. "I've no need of it." I walked, and then I rode, and the other passengers gave me quite a wide berth when they saw the state of my clothes and the look in my eyes. No doubt both conveyed my utter lack of desire for any kind of small talk or pleasantry. I confess, I was glad of the silence and solitude. I wrote line after line despite my fatigue, finishing my report over the hours it took to get back to the capital. It wasn't easy to write neatly with a brush and ink while riding in a horse-drawn cart, but you remember being a student. What miracles of scholarship we could accomplish! And in more adversity than anyone grown used to the luxury of a desk can imagine attempting again.

     I arrived back in the capital just in time for my class to begin, as luck would have it. No time to sleep, no time to wash, no time to acquire proper bandages for my hand, nor new clothes from my dormitory. All I had was the time to glance at my reflection in the polished stones by the entryway to the school building so I could pull the straw out of my hair, straightening it as best I could. I could barely recognize my own reflection! My teacher, naturally, had disapproval in his face that I'm sure he meant to be quite chastising and impressive, but in the past three days I had walked to Kei and back, met the Emperor, and spent far too much time in the company of a man who could be more fearsome at rest than I think my teacher could have been if he strove his entire life for it. So I waited, both unchastised and quite unimpressed, for him to speak.

     And speak he did. "I am told I am to excuse your absence by order of the Taiho, and to give you materials to study the subjects you missed during that time," he said, making it quite clear with his tone that he didn't know what I'd been up to, but he suspected me of forging the order he'd received. After all, who would believe that the Taiho involved himself in the life of an ordinary student? "I hope you accomplished something worthwhile during that time. I suppose I shall be required to extend the due date of your report as well, but be advised that I will not be equally generous in assessing the quality of your work. I expect great things of a student who has caught the eye of the Taiho himself. Your essay will, I hope, be a work of genius."

     My teacher was not, I think, what Fujita would call a fair man. But it was my fortune to still have the temporary passport issued in the name of the Emperor, which I'll confess I made conspicuous as I retrieved my finished report from my bag. I rather enjoyed the look on his face like he might die of shock, so distracted by the passport that he forgot to take my paper. So I placed my report in his hand, saying, "Thank you, but I won't need your generous offer of an extension, sir. I will be content with the chance to study the work I've missed."

     I sat down at my desk, suddenly awake with a sort of exhilaration. The teacher said not one more word to me, nor did the other students ask where I'd been. Although that was the first time I heard people whispering questions about how I might have wounded my hand, none of them dared ask me flat out as you did.

     And there you have it. More tea?


End file.
